Against Multiculturalism
-"Let tousand flowers bloom"-
by Hakim Bey
(Peter Lamborn Wilson -- Mao Tse-tung (revised))
The USA was always supposed to be a "melting pot." Canada, by
contrast, calls itself a "mosaic", which may explain thy
Canadians seem to suffer a kind of long-drawn-out and perpetual
identity crisis. What does it mean to be "Canadian" as opposed to
(or as well as) Quebecois, Celt, or Native?
In the 1950s the USA was supposed to be immune to such headaches.
All cultures would "melt" and fuse into the American character,
the main stream. In truth, however, this "consensus" culture was
simply English colonial culture with amnesia, and a faded patina
of frontier bluster.
Immigrant cultures which resisted meltdown were considered simply
abnormal; the Irish, for example, were viewed as savage
recalcitrants until quite recently. Of course it was hard to tell
if certain cultures remained "outside" because they wanted to or
because they were excluded. In the 1960s blacks were identified
as an unfairly excluded culture, and steps were taken to absorb
them into the mainstream (through school integration for
example). Native Americans were still excluded by law, which
defines them by blood rather than by culture, and maintains
"segregation" by the reservation system. Jews, Hispanics, Asians,
each followed their own trajectory toward assimilation or
resistance.
By the late 1970s or early 1980s it became obvious that the
Melting Pot had somehow failed. Black culture, the test case, now
appeared impossible to absorb. The "consensus" was in danger. The
Right, with its schizophrenic attitudes toward race and culture,
had faltered. A new "liberal" consensus was proposed. It was
called multiculturalism.
Let there be no mistake: multiculturalism is a strategy designed
to save "America" as an idea, and as a system of social control.
Each of the many cultures that make up the nation are now to be
allowed a little measure of self-identity and a few simulacra of
autonomy. School textbooks now reflect this strategy, with 1950s
illustrations of happy historical whites retouched to include a
few blacks, Asians and even Natives. A dozen or so departments of
multiculturalism spring up at university level. Each minority
must now be treated with "dignity" in the curriculum.
Conservatives raise a stink: the Canonical Shibboleths of Western
Civilization are in danger! Our children will be forced to study
... black history! This babble on the Right lends
multiculturalism an aura of "radical" righteousness and political
correctitude, and the Left leaps forward to defend the new
paradigm. In the middle according to theory - balance will be
restored, and the consensus will function again. The trouble is
that the theory itself emanates neither from the Right nor Left
nor Center. It emanates from the top. It's a theory of control.
The old textbooks depicted all ethnic/cultural particularity as a
taint which could only be overcome in the great pot of conformity
to the Norm. Yet the Norm was itself so clearly and simply a form
of hegemonic particularism that the textbooks wore thin and
eventually grew transparent. They had to go - I agree. Now we
have a few texts which admit, for example, that Columbus was a
mixed blessing and that Africans were not morally responsible for
being slaves. This is a step forward - I agree. However, I remain
interested in knowing precisely who has given us permission to
hold such opinions - and why?
In the first place, it seems obvious that each of the "many"
particular cultures is being measured against or assimilated to a
mainstream "universal" culture. The only difference is that the
mainstream now, apparently, values a bit of "diversity," and
feels a bit of permissible nostalgia for colorful ethnic customs.
At the heart of the discourse however, the very discourse which
now defines itself as "lmulticultural", there remains a "solid
core curriculum" made up of the same old Euro-rationalist
axiomata, scientistic triumphalism, and ruling-class teleology.
This mainstream constitutes Civilization, and only on the
periphery of this centrality can the cultures find a place.
Whatever the cultures may possess which might be of use to
Civilization will of course be accepted with gratitude. Each
quaint little local culture has something to offer, something to
be "proud" of. A museological passion inspirits the Center;
everyone collects little ethnic particularities; everyone's a
tourist; everyone appropriates.
The multicultural conversation as totalist monologue might go
something like this: Yes, your little handicrafts will look good
in my living room, where they'll help disguise the fact that my
house was designed by - and perhaps for - a machine. Yes, your
sweat-lodge ceremony will provide us with a pleasant week-end
"experience". Gosh, aren't we the Masters of the Universe? Why
should we put up with this bland old Anglo-American furniture
when we can take yours instead? Aren't you grateful? And no more
Imperial Colonialism either: we pay for what we take - and even
what we break! Pay, pay, pay. After all, it's only money.
Thus multiculturalism is seen in the first place to propose both
universalism and particularism at once - in effect, a totality.
Every totality implies a totalitarianism, but in this case, the
Whole appears in friendly face, a great theme park where every
"special case" can be endlessly reproduced. Multiculturalism is
the "Spectacle" of communicativeness - conviviality which it
renders into commodity form and sells back to those who have
dreamed it. In this sense multiculturalism appears as the
necessary ideological reflection of the Global Market or "New
World Order," the "one" world of too-Late Capitalism and the "end
of History."
The "end of History" is of course code for the "end of the
Social". Multiculturalism is the decor of the end of the Social,
the metaphorical imagery of the complete atomization of the
"consumer". And what will the consumer consume? Images of
culture.
In the second place, multiculturalism is not just a false
totality or unification, but also a false separation. The
"minorities" are told in effect that no common goals or values
could unite them, except of course the goals and values of the
consensus. Blacks have Black Culture, for example, and are no
longer required to assimilate. So long as Black Culture tacitly
recognizes the centrality of the consensus - and its own
peripherality - it will be allowed and even encouraged to thrive.
Genuine autonomy, however, is out of the question, and so is any
"class consciousness" which might cut across ethnic or
"lifestyle" lines to suggest revolutionary coalitions. Each
minority contributes to the Center, but nothing is allowed to
circulate on the periphery, and certainly not the power of
collectivity. A diagram would look like this:
Unlike a flower, which opens its borders to bees and breezes and
flows out into life, the "consensus" draws all energy inward and
absorbs it into a closed system of rigid control a death-like
process which must eventually end in sterility and hysteresis.
Living as we do in the era of total Global order and the physical
and cultural environment it secretes, it should be obvious that
particularise can represent a form of resistance. The Totality
has therefore undertaken to appropriate the energy of the
resistance by offering a false form of particularism, empty of
all creative power, as a commodified simulacrum of
insurrectionary desire. In this sense multiculturalism is simply
the recto of that page whose verso is "ethnic cleansing". Both
sides spell disappearance for any authentic particular culture of
resistance.
At the same time the Consensus secretly encourages race and even
class hatred. In the mysterious absence of that "Evil Empire"
which once provided an excuse for every act of violent repression
and corruption carried out in "defense of Western Civilization",
the Consensus must now seek out or even create its "enemies"
within itself. Intelligence orgs fall in love with violent
nationalists, separatists, and chauvinists of all kinds. In such
circles, multiculturalism means: "let them tear out each others'
throats, and save us the trouble". Thus every act of rebellion
and violent hatred simply increases the power of the "Security
State". Already we see that the Discourse of Power is running out
of patience with these "darned minorities and all their P.C.
blather. We offered them multiculturalism and look! Still they
rebel. Criminals!"
The Left has believed so long in the "International" that it has
- so far - failed to adjust to the post-1989 situation with a
clear response to the "New Globalism." When the Berlin Wall fell,
in the moment of freedom which opened there, a new form of
internationalism rushed to fill the breach. As United States
politicians crowed about how "the Cold War is over and we won"
international Capital declared the end of all ideology. This
means not only that Communism is "dead" but also that "democratic
republicanism" has served its purpose and transformed itself into
an empty idol. Henceforth only one force will "rule" - the
rationality of money. Abstracted from all real valuation,
representing nothing but itself, money is etherealized, and
finally divinized. Money has "gone to Heaven" and left mere life
behind.
In this situation both Right and Left will rebel - and in some
cases it will be hard to tell the difference. A myriad forms of
particularism will arise, consciously or unconsciously, to oppose
the false totality and pitiful booby-prizes of multiculturalism's
"New World Order". The Social has not ended, of course, no more
than everyday life itself. But the Social will now involve itself
with the insurrectionary potential of difference. In its most
unconscious and deeply deluded form, this passion for difference
will simply repeat the old and empty rhetoric of classical
nationalism or racism. Hence, ''ethnic cleansing" from Bosnia to
California.
Against this hegemonic particularism, we might propose a more
conscious and socially just form of anti-hegemonic particularism.
It's difficult to envision the precise shape such a force might
assume, but it grows easier to identify as it actually emerges. A
miraculous revival of Native-American culture steals the fire of
the Columbus celebrations in 1992, and sharpens the debate over
cultural appropriation. In Mexico the Zapatista uprising,
according to the New York Times, the first "post-modern
rebellion", constitutes the first armed actionagainst the New
Globalism - in the particularise but antihegemonic cause of the
Mayans and peasants of Chiapas. I regard this as a struggle for
"empirical freedoms" rather than "ideology." In a positive sense
one might say that all cultural and/or social forms of
particularism deserve support as long as
they remain anti-hegemonic, and precisely to the extent that they
remain so.
In this context we might even discover uses for
"multiculturalism", since it may serve as a medium for the
propagation of subversive memes, and the insurrectionary desire
for radical difference. Such a subversive "entry into the media,"
however, can serve only one ultimate purpose: the utter
destruction of multiculturalist neo-imperialism and its
transformation into something else. If the secret agenda of
multiculturalism demands universal separation under the aegis of
a false totality, then the radical response to multiculturalism
must attack not only its ersatz universality but also its
invidious alienation, its false separatism. If we support true
anti-hegemonic particularism, we must also support the other half
of the dialectic by developing a force to penetrate all false
boundaries, to restore communicativeness and conviviality across
a horizontal and random web of connectivities and solidarities.
This would constitute the true force of which multiculturalism is
merely the empty simulacrum. It would complement anti-hegemonic
particularism with a genuine reciprocity among peoples and
cultures. The "economy of the Gift" would replace the economy of
exchange and cormodification. The Social would resume circulation
on the level of experienced life" through the exercise of
imagination and generosity.
In this sense the answer to the problem of "appropriation" would
arise from the concept of a "universal potlach" of giving and
sharing. As a test case, examine the issue of cultural
appropriation of Native-American values. The original identity of
tribal peoples in the "New" World was tribal, not racial. Anyone
could be adopted into a tribe, as were many drop-out whites and
run-away blacks. The twentieth-century renaissance of Native
Culture has discovered certain spiritual universals which it
wants to give and share with everyone, and it has discovered an
anti-hegemonic particularism which it desires for itself. The
Elders charge that too many Americans want to appropriate or
commodity the latter (sweat-lodges, sun-dances, etc.) but ignore
or despise the former (reverence for Nature, love of place as
topocosm, etc.) . The Native tradition is not closed, despite the
just anger and bitterness of the tribes, but demands reciprocity
rather than appropriation. Let us Euro's first evolve a serious
revolutionary attitude toward the restoration of wild (er) ness;
then it will be appropriate for us to make the fine Alexandrian
gesture of "worshipping local spirits".
The Situationists already envisioned this strategy when they
coined that much-abused slogan: "think globally, act locally".
Our true interests include global realities, such as
"environment", but eff ctive power can never be global without
being oppressive. Top-down solutions reproduce hierarchy and
alienation. Only local action for "empirical freedoms" can effect
change on the level of "experienced life" without imposing
categories of control. A New-age Nietzsche might have called it
"the will to self-empowerment".
The poet Nathaniel Mackay calls it cross-culturalism. The image
expresses a non-hierarchic, de-centered web of cultures, each one
singular, but not alienated from other cultures. Exchange takes
place as reciprocity across the permeable boundaries of this
complex of autonomous, but loosely defined, differences. I would
add a further refinement. This reciprocity will produce more than
the mere sum of exchanges within the system, and this more will
constitute a universal value in circulation among free
collectivities and individuals. Hence the term cross-cultural
synergetics might describe the precise term (or slogan) proposed
as a replacement for "multiculturalism".
Conclusion
The multicultural paradigm presupposes a false totality within
which are subsumed a set of false particularities. These
differences are represented and packaged as "lifestyle choices"
and "ethnicities", commodities to appease the genuine passion for
genuine difference with mere "traces" and images of "dignity" and
even of "rebellion". Against this, cross-cultural synergism
proposes actual autonomy, whether for individuals or cohesions of
individuals, based on radical consciousness and organic identity.
In this sense, cross-culturalism can only oppose itself to
"multiculturalism", either through a strategy of subversion, or
through open assault. Either way, "multiculturalism" must be
destroyed.
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